Now or Never

President Obama says that we must pass a health care program that doesn't take effect until 2014 (but one that we start paying for now) immediately or it will never get done. This is a straw-man argument and it is egregious. Bernie Sanders, gentlenut from Vermont, is fond of saying that 43,000 people die in the United States every year because we don’t have THIS program, and health care costs will double without it; another straw-man argument, equally egregious. I am sick, sick, sick of the all or nothing, we have to do it now crappola that continues to spew forth from the mouths of those who will never partake in this health care plan.

We have three choices. We can continue with the democratic, cronie-enhanced, lawyer-enrichment plan that currently exists, or we can choose from one of two options. The one currently under consideration is, if not a direct move into socialized medicine, an incrementally dangerous one. Or, we can look at our Constitution as the rule book it was intended to be and recognize that our health is a natural right, given to us by God (or by nature, in deference to my atheist husband), not a right granted by the Federal Government. We can do what our Constitution recommends by getting our federal government out of the way of the free market. Have our legislators yet asked why our “private” system of health care isn’t working? No. They have simply substituted one set of regulations for a new set and berated those who stand against the idea that unelected individuals should ever have veto power over the distribution of health products as obstructionists.

If we are obstructionists because we believe in free market ideals, then I raise my gun and salute all who join me. The government must provide the environment in which private companies can offer health insurance to the majority of Americans. We are not monsters, we also see solutions for the uninsurable, those with debilitating diseases or chronic health problems. Creating a separate pool for these individuals has been an idea floating around conservative circles for years. Obviously, we as a society must have a safety net, but we should pool our resources only to provide difficult-to-insure individuals with plans to which they can also contribute, if possible. Whenever the government has tried to offer insurance, of any kind, the system has been fraught with WF&A (waste, fraud & abuse) and each and every time our politicians promise to reduce the WF&A. Well, as Reagan would say, they haven’t done it yet, so why should we let them do it now?

If there is WF&A to the tune of billions, then go find it. Pass reasonable tort reform and start using activity-based costing methods to accurately determine the portion of costs our current legal system imposes on the hospital or doctor’s bills that we receive. Stop telling us it is only 2% of the total cost of health care in our system, when it is clear that doctors order tests to avoid litigation, a cost that has never been assessed. Start with the small stuff, and move forward; which brings me to my final point.

The argument that we must have a revolutionary reform in our health system is ludicrous. Small changes are a time-tested, acceptable method in the business world that will translate to effective change in health care. My questions are: why not make small changes? Why not start over with bipartisan support from the start? Why not? I’ll tell you why, because if we continue to pass large spending bills, our country will closely resemble Greece in several years, and since I live in the United States of America, I don’t want to look like Greece. I like our Constitution, I believe our founders had the right idea, and if you want to go live in Greece, you’ll get all the social engineering you could possibly want.